Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 3: Then

"Where are you, Juju Bear?"

Owen's breath tickled the back of my ear as he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. The sound of his voice brought me back to the parlor from wherever my mind wandered when I lost track of it.

I chuckled at Owen's use of his silliest nickname for me. It usually meant he was in the mood for having a real heart-to-heart conversation. Early on in our relationship, I had made the mistake of drunkenly declaring to him that Juju Bears were, in my opinion, the Most Disgusting Of All Gummy Candies. He had reacted to my opinion by pointing out that "Juju Bear" worked perfectly as a nickname for "Julie." The nickname had annoyed me at first, but only in the performative way that flirtatious gestures affect people when they first start dating. Really, the fact that Owen Porter had invented a special name for me made my heart swell with pride and I hoped that he'd never stop calling me that. He hadn't, but over the years it had morphed from a teasing name to one that signaled he had something big on his mind.

I already knew what he wanted to talk about as I turned away from the front window to face him, burying my face in the crook of his shoulder and breathing in the comforting scent of Men's Deodorant. After a moment, I pulled away and looked up at his honest, amber eyes to confirm my suspicion.

Yup.

From the way he looked down at me, I could tell that he wanted to discuss the same thing he'd been bringing up consistently for months now, without any change in the outcome: having a kid.

More precisely, he wanted to discuss me having a kid. I was the one who was going to have to be pregnant for almost a year and then push a watermelon-sized living thing from the most sensitive part of my body. And he was going to try to talk me into it. Again.

It's not that I didn't want to have kids ever. It's just that I really liked the way things were between Owen and me already. Throwing another person into the mix just seemed like inviting an unnecessary obstacle to overcome at a time when we were sailing along fairly smoothly. We both had careers into which we'd invested a lot of time and positive energy, I as a writer and he as an accountant.

Being an accountant was, admittedly, about the least sexy job imaginable, but that's all it was to Owen: a job. He took it seriously and worked hard, but he had never been the type to concentrate on advancing up the corporate ladder or establishing a career legacy for himself. I had always admired his homemaking tendencies and loved our lifestyle of being at home together most of the time when he wasn't at the office.

As a freelance writer, I usually sat out on our back porch to work during the day when the weather allowed, and when the seasons shifted I moved inside to the large oak desk in the front parlor. Even when I was working on boring copy for some cookie-cutter corporation's website, I enjoyed writing in a way Owen clearly did not expect to enjoy accounting. For him, a job was just a way to pay the bills and support what really mattered to him, which was his family.

Or at least, that was his vision for his life. In order for it all to come together, he needed me to play along.

"There you are," he chuckled, holding my gaze as I focused back on the room. "Are you thinking of getting some work done?"

"Nah," I shook out my long, tangled curls and scooped them up between my hands, gathering the mass of hair in a pile on top of my head. "Just about to start getting ready to head over to the Dolan's."

That evening, our neighbors were hosting the first holiday party we'd been invited to so far that year. It was likely the only one we'd be invited to, besides Owen's company party, and that morning I had woken up with a familiar social anxiety creeping along the back of my neck. I had spent the day trying to ignore it.